benrollo

Another evening with the Mrs away means more quality FM23 time! Might as well lead with the biggest story of the season - Kenan Bozic 24-1 is no longer a Zemun player. The board accepted a £1.3m offer from Partizan for him, and after turning down multiple contract offers from abroad last season, he decided to move just down the road to Belgrade. I drive out to his house some nights just to catch a glimpse of my beautiful boy. In other ex-Zemun player news, Nikola Cakic 26-1 was on the move again, this time joining Leipzig from Bayern for £19.5m! We got another £500k from the transfer, so cheers for that lads. Secondary to that news was the fact that we once again secured a top half finish. It was tougher going than last season - we only scored 23 goals in 30 league games, third lowest tally in the league. Safe to say we need to find someone new to score goals for us. Thankfully we were strong at the back, conceding the third lowest number of goals. Looking at our best performers, it's probably no surprise that our defenders came out on top. Ivan Pavlovic 27-11 (7.14 average rating) and Ranko Vojvodic 24-5 (7.00 average rating) were the backbone of our back line. Srdan Mihajlovic 27-6 (6.96 average rating) was third in terms of our regular starters. Honourable mention too to super sub Matija Tripkovic 27-4 (6.96 average rating) who actually scored some important goals for us, mostly off the bench. Stop me if you've heard this one before, but once again we were promised a golden generation in our youth candidates preview. And look at that - a 3.5* CA striker in the class! Could we have ourselves a Bozic replacement in the pipeline? Đorđe Petrović 31-1 Yes, we could! Đorđe showed us what he could do right from the off, tearing our under 19s apart in the youth candidates game. Some promising technicals for a 15 year old, but he does need some development. I play with a pressing forward so there are some attributes I'd like to see higher, but hopefully Đorđe can get there. Ivan Mitrović 31-2 Another attacking midfielder who needs a bit of work to slot into the starting lineup. A long way to go, but my assistant seems impressed. Milko Brkic 31-3 Needs training to play in a deeper role, but a really good starting point in some key attributes. We had 9 elite talents in all, although outside of Petrović they all need a lot of work. You can't get immediate starters every year though, so let's hope Dejan Kukolj 31-4, Radovan Đorđević 31-5, Aleksandar Andrejević 31-6, Loïc Capron 31-7, Saša Vujko 31-8 and Dušan Matič 31-9 can develop over the next few years. Off the pitch, we managed to make some progress. Our youth facilities were upgraded, and I have just managed to once again convince the board to spend all our money on another youth facilities upgrade which should get us up to Good. I have now completed my Continental Pro license, so I've basically completed the game. Here's how my career currently looks. I feel like we're relatively established as a mid table side now, so I would love to start seeing some progress towards that top 5. We did manage to beat Čukarički for the first time in my career last season, so that's at least one step in the right direction. ONWARDS!

Sadly it's affecting any player with a club option it seems. Not the end of the world, I'll have to work with it

Cheers! We've got a real issue with scoring goals now but hopefully we've got enough in the bank to combine with end of season income to get that next elusive upgrade!

Ah that's interesting! I'm going to dig some more

Just realised I'm not able to trigger club option extensions which is a bit of a pain. Spotted this post in the bug tracker - just a word of warning guys!

Yeah very welcome funds, not quite enough to get the training facilities upgraded though. Sadly the board accepted the bid and there was no sell on clause

It's over

Yours were the inspiration, I absolutely love the flag maps you've done

More infographics? MOAR INFOGRAPHICS. Is it possible to go too far? Probably. Safe to say this season was our best yet. A 6th place finish, with safety secured before the last game of the season. It does seem like our youngsters are starting to mature to a point where we aren't completely out of our depth. The top 5 or 6 teams are still miles ahead of us mind. For the second season running, we lost a player after the board accepted the bid. This time it was Igor Pavlovic 27-1 who was on his way out for £750k to Porto. Once again, the board failed to insert any kind of sell on clause. And just as with Nikola Cakic 26-1 (who has now moved to Bayern Munich, netting us a measly £100k), his value has rocketed. To £17.5 MILLION QUID. Looking forward to another few thousand when he moves on. I knew Pavlovic would have to be moved on as he was in the last year of his contract, so I can't be too mad. Back to our squad, and - stop me if you've heard this one before - Kenan Bozic 24-1 was our best player. He banged in 27 goals to earn himself a 7.58 average rating, and even got called up to the full Bosnia squad on 3 occasions. Sadly he is yet to make his full international debut, but it can't be long surely. I was convinced we would lose Bozic when 3 American teams came in with big bids (honestly, £2m would have been pretty handy), but he turned them all down! His agent is now demanding that he has a release clause of £500k inserted into a new contract, despite him being valued at £2.2m. So that's nice for me. Coming in behind Bozic were Ranko Vojvodic 24-5 (7.11 average rating) and Nikola Pejovic 25-1 (7.10 average rating). I'm still not entirely sure if Pejovic is any good, but he's the best we've got on the right wing for the time being. For the 7th season running, we were promised a 5 star youth candidates class, and I have to say I find it hard to disagree with that assessment. Whatever they're putting in the water in Belgrade to produce 7 golden generations in a row, I hope they keep doing it. The class graduated with 8 elite talents, and another really good looking goalkeeper prospect headlining the class. Goran Dimitrijevic 30-1 Such a big talent that he actually immediately took the number 1 spot for the remainder of the season. Dimi managed to keep 4 clean sheets in 14 matches, earning himself a spot in the record books. A little bit of a shame for previous 'keeper golden child Nikola Simonovic 29-2, who actually managed 2 clean sheets earlier in the season before Dimi stole his thunder. Vukan Stevic 30-2 I don't think it will be long before Pejovic's place on the right wing is under threat from this lad. Bojan Milosevic 30-3 Our second year with a seemingly technically-deficient right back. Seems like he has a lot of room to grow, but it's going to take a while. Rounding out the elite talents we had Claude Thiebaud 30-4, Todor Nikolic 30-5, Giannis Nomikos 30-6 (OUR FIRST GRADUATE BORN OUTSIDE OF SERBIA, THANK YOU RECRUITMENT TEAM!), Andreas Kyriakou 30-7 and Danilo Mijailovic 30-8. Genuinely quite exciting to not only see our first foreign-born graduate, but also to get a few lads born outside of the immediate Belgrade area. Give it another 10 years or so and we might even reach Hungary. Not too much has changed behind the scenes. I managed to get on to the Continental Pro license course at the first attempt, so that's a bonus. Facilities wise we've stayed put, although just after receiving our end of season income I did manage to convince the board to invest in the youth facilities. It does mean we start the season with £36k in the bank, but I'm sure we'll work it out. Here's my profile as things stand (forgot that in the last 2 updates, d'oh). The biggest concern coming up on the horizon is Bozic's contract. It has a year left to run, but I'm playing chicken with his agent in the hopes he'll eventually just forget about the release fee clause. Eventually I may have to admit defeat, but I'll be as stubborn as possible until December.

A great shout! I'm going to give it a go, cheers!

That's now 2 seasons in a row where we have secured a top 8 finish on the final day of the season. It's also the second season in a row we would have only just escaped the relegation playoff places had we finished one place lower in the first stage! Our finish is made more impressive with the fact that wonderkid Nikola Cakic 26-1 was sold very early in the season. Our board accepted a bid of £475k for the lad, which I would have been OK with if it had come with any kind of sell on clause. I tried offering him out for less with a clause attached but nobody bit. He's now valued up to £5.6m, which is nice for him. Back to the subject of players who still actually play for us, and it was - of course - Kenan Bozic 24-1 who stood out once again. We're about as close to a one man team as it is possible to be in Football Manager. He led the way with a 7.49 average rating, whilst banging in 20 goals and picking up two end of season awards. One of Cakic's replacements came in behind Bozic - Ivan Pavlovic 27-11 put up an average rating of 7.08 in 16 games. Rounding out the top 3 was Branko Gligorijevic 24-3, one of the early graduates who has been steadily plugging away without too much recognition. His 6.90 rating isn't spectacular, but it's solid enough. Our 2029 graduate class was off to a promising start when the youth candidates preview came through. I was really hoping we'd get a decent 'keeper prospect out of the class, as we haven't had anyone come close to challenging journeyman number 1 Nemanja Jevric. Incredibly, Jevric had played every single competitive game I had managed (230 games!) until a twisted ankle kept him out for 3 games. Sadly, his replacement Pavle Vasic 26-2 was unable to keep a clean sheet - and get onto my infographic - in his absence. The class graduated, and although there were only 4 elite talents, there were some really promising players in there. Here's a look at all 4 elite talents. Milos Stojanovic 29-1 Oh mumma, what a talent. The ol' 3-year club option was inserted into Milos' contract - I'm not making that mistake again. The only downside is the fact that we don't play with an AM. I'm not sure he's cut out to be a central midfielder in a deeper role, but unless Bozic leaves we aren't going to have a space up top any time soon. A keeper! A decent looking one too, by far the most promising one we've seen come out of the academy so far. Fingers crossed he can push Jevric for game time before too long. Kieran Cooper 29-3 Ah yes, that famous Serbian surname, Cooper. Coop was born in Zemun, but is half Canadian. He's certainly miles behind the others in this class, but I absolutely love that determination. Jovan Bojanic 29-4 Leaves a lot to be desired technically, and is apparently out for blood every time he crosses the white line, but right back is a position we aren't particularly deep in so I'm hoping Boj develops quickly. Behind the scenes, this was a good season. After the disappointment of the facilities being downgraded, we managed to use the funds from the Cakic sale to upgrade both our youth and training facilities. I also managed to start work on my Continental A license as well. I'm still scratching my head about our youth recruitment policy (I have scouts with a wide range of nation knowledge and everything), but if the lads born in the Belgrade region are this promising, I can't really complain too much. Next season I'm going to be in a similar position with Igor Pavlovic 27-1 as I was with Cakic - my contract signing skills are garbage and I'm doing a terrible job of locking talents down long-term. Pavlovic doesn't want to sign a new deal, but I'm hoping at least we can push towards a cool million if we do sell. Other than that, it would be great if we could secure a top half finish before the final game of the regular season, but I'm not fussy.

I had to give it a go after seeing some of the absolutely stellar work with infographics in here! This was our most successful season to date, not only based on our final league position of 8th - meaning we avoided the relegation drama altogether - but also because we managed to convince Kenan Bozic 24-1 to sign a new contract! In the Final Phase we didn't really do a great deal (actually finishing just 1 point better off than the team in the final relegation playoff position!) but we were safe. For the second year running, our best 3 performers were all academy graduates. Kenan Bozic 24-1 of course led the way, with an insane 7.72 average rating. Second place is maybe slightly contentious, as Bojan Milovanovic 25-6 only started 3 games, but he did come off the bench to seemingly superb effect in 17 games - earning himself a 7.54 rating. Nikola Cakic 26-1 was third with a 7.07 rating, along with a place in the NxGn 2028 list to boot! The youth candidates preview again promised exciting things, which was then followed up with 7 elite talents when they graduated. It was certainly good to see a couple of players rated highly enough in terms of CA to potentially help us immediately. Here are the top 3 talents, who did really stand out from the rest. Dragan Lukic 28-1 Lukic made 9 appearances after graduating and played pretty well. We do have a half decent DM already in the squad, but I can't imagine it will be long before 'House of the' Dragan is first choice. Slavisa Markovic 28-2 Already up to 10 appearances, which is impressive when you consider we have an established left winger already in the shape of Igor Pavlovic 27-1. I'm working on retraining Markovic as a left back to open up more opportunities, and provide more cover. Filip Kostic 28-3 Kostic is buried behind Nikola Pejovic 25-1 for that right wing slot, and has not yet made a senior appearance. He has the promise to overtake Pejovic at some point though. Our other elite talents were Dusan Pavlovic, Goran Stankovic, Aleksa Pavlovic and Almir Durakovic. We also had our first poached graduate, so I'll be keeping an eye out for him in future classes. Off the field, we finally managed to convince the board to let us go on a coaching course (it isn't going to take us on to bigger and better things, I promise). Frustratingly, our youth facilities have been downgraded, and we still don't have the funds to reverse the deterioration. We did manage to get our Junior Coaching up to an Exceptional level, although I'm yet to see the impact of our exception recruitment - we can pop our heads outside of the Belgrade area chaps! Next season might be the one where we start to sell off one or two talents. I really want to get the facilities upgraded, but there just isn't enough money in the Serbian game to allow us to get to that point. Plus, wonderkid extraordinaire Cakic only has 2 years left on his contract, and he won't sign a new one!

The infographics in this thread man, absolutely next level! @Braumiller you have inspired me to try something for my next update

I actually had the exact same thing happen in my Elverum save 2 years ago haha. I believe the response back then was to leave him in your reserves/don't pick him, or go back to an earlier save depending on when that was!

That sell on clause hopefully comes in big! Sadly, you can't loan back players in this challenge though

FK Zemun - 2026/27 Season Review League Position - 12th (4th in Group B Final Phase) -- RELEGATION AVOIDED Manager Overview Survival! It tastes so sweet. We were pretty much carried single-handed by The Bozzman, but I'm not going to complain! In the end, there were a few teams who were just worse than us, and with another strong end to the season in the final phase (3 wins and 2 draws in our 7 games), we squeaked ourselves one place above the relegation playoff by 1 point. A big sign that the times are changing at the club came in the form of our top 3 performers all being youth academy graduates for the first time. Bozic (7.35 Avg Rating) led the way of course, followed by Nikola Cakic 26-1 (6.87) and Nikola Pejovic 25-1 (6.78). Not great ratings overall, but the sign of a season of struggle I suppose. We did manage to set a Super League record this season though! When the youth candidates preview came through, there was a bit of a contradiction. An apparent 5-star class, but only 3 A-rated positions. I was intrigued to see what that meant when the class graduated. What it meant was a pretty decent looking class, with 6 elite talents. Our headliner managed 10 senior games after signing his contract - let's take a look. Igor Pavlovic 27-1 Jovica Mihajlovic 27-2 Ivan Vlajic 27-3 Bringing up the...er...elite rear were Matija Tripkovic 27-4, Dragan Milunovic 27-5 and Srdan Mihajlovic 27-6. Not as much to report off the field this season. The board were too scared to lose me to let me go on a coaching course, and again our finances mean improving our facilities are a long way off. We did however manage a double upgrade to our recruitment, meaning it is now at an exceptional level! Could next season be our first with a prospect from more than about 3 miles away? Financially we are doing OK. I'm hoping we can stick around in the division as our youngsters continue to develop, but as with the last two seasons a lot of that rides on keeping hold of Bozic!

I had a great time with Elverum in FM21 - good luck @russ the womble!

FK Zemun - 2025/26 Season Review League Position - 8th (5th in Group A Final Phase) -- PROMOTED VIA PLAYOFF! Away Leg - Home Leg Manager Overview Absolutely UNBELIEVABLE! Zemun are heading to the Super League after a bonkers 10-5 aggregate win over Radnicki - but that's only half the story! The regular season was pretty uneventful in all honesty. We played well and I think an 8th place finish was the least we deserved - as you can see from the league table above, we were one win away from potentially finishing 3rd. That seemed to give the lads confidence heading into the final phase, as we went unbeaten in our final 6 games to sneak 5th place. I don't know why Graficar were not able to be promoted, but we gladly took the last playoff spot at their expense! In the playoff, we started well with a 2-1 win away to Radnicki, but nothing could prepare us for what was to come in the second leg. Radnicki peppered our goal with shots, but we showed them how to do it at the other end with one of the most ruthless attacking displays I've seen. 14 shots, 12 on target, 8 goals. Do we have a hope of staying up? I'm not sure. We've kept our squad mostly intact, so we'll give it a good go! Our best performers this season were Kenan 'The Bozzman' Bozic 24-1 (7.35 in 41 games), Ivan Tejic (7.05 in 39 games) and Lazar Ristovski (7.03 in 39 games). Bozic has been a superb player for us, and is developing at an alarming rate. The board almost sold him for peanuts after accepting a too good to refuse bid, but I thankfully managed to talk them down. Not sure how much longer we can keep hold though - he's attracted one or two bids. The youth preview again promised...promising things, although the lack of central midfielders was a concern. That was followed up with eight elite talents graduating from the academy, and for the first time I had a player who looked like he could step in and contribute immediately. That player led the top prospects: Nikola Cakic Pavle Vasic Lazar Govedarica Additionally in the elite category we had Stefan Dimitrov, Miljan Stajic, Branimir Dervisevic, Vukasin Duric and Miroslav Kocic. Cakic came straight in to the starting lineup (signing a contract before the youth graduates match even took place!) and put in a 6.98 average rating in 14 games. A promising start! Off the pitch we had a pretty eventful season too. I now hold a Continental C license, and we've seen upgrades to both our recruitment and junior coaching. In the case of our junior coaching, we had a double upgrade - thanks to some...interesting board room discussions: Our form seemed to turn around in the 5 minutes it took me to walk down to the board room. On to 2026/27 - I'm pretty pessimistic about our chances in the division, but let's see what the young lads can do!

FK Zemun - 2024/25 Season Review League Position - 7th (8th in Group A Final Phase) Manager Overview Amazing how much FM you can get played when the Mrs is away! We went a couple of steps better this season, securing a top half finish for the final phase. There were a couple of rough patches along the way, but it's progress. We didn't do much in the Final Phase, but it was a chance to get some of the new youngsters in for some match experience. Our top performances for the season came from Kenan Bozic 24-1 (7.01), Lazar Ristovski (6.97) and Marko Vancagovic (6.95). Lazovic - our star striker - got miserable halfway through the season and ended up getting sold (for a measly £10k) rather than letting him run down his contract. That opened up a spot up top for new boy Bozic, and he played well. It was actually Branko Gligorijevic 24-3 who started the hotter of the graduates, bagging the first graduate league goal in a 1-0 away win. The youth preview brought more promising news. Could there be another golden generation on their way? Er, absolutely there could yes. NINE elite talents! As with last season, I signed all 16 graduates to fill out the club, hopefully from next season I can start being a bit more selective. Leading the way in the class were: Nikola Pejovic Marko Stefanovic Ljubisa Rankovic And filling out the other 6 elite slots we had Borivoje Lukic, Danilo Knezevic, Bojan Milovanovic, Milos Andrejic, Dusan Milutinovic and Dragan Tosic. Pejovic got some good game time after graduating, and figures to give Bozic a run for his money. Behind the scenes, we had some good and bad news. I managed to take 2 coaching courses, and now hold a National A license. Youth recruitment was upgraded too. Sadly, our training facilities degraded, and it figures to probably be a while before we can reverse that.

FK Zemun - 2023/24 Season Review League Position - 9th (2nd in Group B Final Phase) Manager Overview Survival was the name of the game in season 1, and survival was achieved. We fell just one point short of finishing in the top half for the Final Phase, which would have meant absolutely no relegation worries, but in the end we did enough to stay up. We had a couple of good players for the level, with Andreja Lazovic and Nemanja Jevric the pick of the bunch. Ivan Tejic ended up with our best Avg Rating for the season with a 7.10. We had just about enough players in the squad to avoid playing greyed-out players too much, but we had very little help from the youngsters who started at the club because they just weren't up to scratch. 16-year old Danijel Cvetkovic ended up playing 29 games for us because we were so short in the middle of the park. There were encouraging signs when the youth preview came in. I just wanted depth in the squad, so positions were secondary to talent. When they arrived, having 3 elite talents was nice. I would have preferred to maybe have a player or two a little closer to knocking on the door of the first team, but looking at Cvetkovic's workload, some of these lads are probably not far away! The three lads in the elite category were: Kenan Bozic Strahinja Kovacevic Branko Gligorijevic Bozic probably would have gotten minutes early had he not needed to be registered as a foreign player. He managed one start in our last game of the season, but I envision big things for the lad in 2024/25. Off the field, we managed to complete the National C coaching qualification, and the club upgraded our Youth Recruitment from Adequate to Average. Financially we're doing OK. We lost about £90k over the course of the season, but we'd started with £160k. Sponsorships and the like have boosted us back up to £180k, so hopefully we can have a go at a few more upgrades to the recruitment and junior coaching next season. Next Season: We consolidate our place in the division, develop some of our youngsters, and upgrade our facilities. Oh, and keep whoever TSC are away from our youngsters!

Early chance to ask the board for some facilities upgrades...this should cover it

Decided to have a little Beta go with a Serbian team, seeing as they haven't been tried yet. Not particularly comfortable with there only being two tiers, but we'll give it a go! Zemun hire BigNuts - the fairy tale starts here.